Rouhani’s appointment of Hamid Aboutalebi, former hostage-taker of U.S. embassy in Iran, as the Iranian regime’s new ambassador to the UN and the outrage that has been sparked regarding this issue.

The Iranian resistance has issued a new statement, revealing further information about Aboutalebi’s role in terrorist activities against Iranian opposition members abroad and the assassination of Mohammad Hossein Naghdi, NCRI’s representative in Italy. Hamid Abutalebi, who has been appointed by Hassan Rouhani as the regime’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York, has a long record of cooperation with the revolutionary guards’ intelligence, as well as with other intelligence services of the regime, and based on investigations by the Italian Judicial Police and eye-witness accounts, he coordinated the assassination of Mohammad-hossein Naghdi, the representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in Italy, on 16 March 1993.

Mohammad-hossein Naghdi, who was charge d’affaires in Rome (the regime’s highest-ranking diplomat in Italy), defected and joined the Resistance in March 1982 in protest at the executions, tortures and massacres by the regime. Later as the representative of the NCRI in Italy, he actively disclosed the mullahs’ crimes and promoted the Resistance.

Following the assassination of Naghdi, the Iranian Resistance declared that the regime’s embassy in Rome had been involved in coordinating this criminal operation.

In subsequent years, with the investigations by the Italian Police and the accounts of the eye-witnesses, it was determined that Abutalebi, who had been mullahs’ Ambassador from 1988 to 1992, had been the architect and organizer of this assassination.

According to the investigation, at the time of the assassination of Naghdi, Abutalebi entered Italy using a pseudonym and forged documents to implement this crime. The police investigation, including accounts given by an informed witness, read: “Naghdi’s murder should be considered a political one decided by Iranian government circles and in the framework of a general project to destroy the Resistance abroad. Naghdi is targeted in Italy because of the value and extent of his political activities in Italy. He was talented in establishing connections with senior figures in Italian political circles on a national scale; he had an unquestionable humanitarian character, and loved his struggle against the Iranian regime. This assassination was decided by high-ranking political-religious figures in Tehran, and the execution of the plan was tasked to a team that had entered Italy for this specific purpose. The team had a direct connection with the diplomatic representative in Italy, and in particular with Ambassador Abutalebi.”

Another section of the report by the Italy’s Criminal Police reads: “Abutalebi and Naghdi had known each other since the 1979 revolution. Abutalebi’s personal interest in murdering Naghdi stemmed on the one hand from the fact that it was a religious duty to carry out this death sentence that was ordained by a fatwa and on the other hand because of his several years of acquaintance with the victim, the Ambassador had the means to accomplish this death sentence with no risk. Moreover, such a project, if implemented in this fashion, would be fruitful for his personal goals and promotion.

“The operation had a code name and Abutalebi needed to get the final green light from Tehran before he would give the go ahead for the operation.”

Mohammad-hossein Naghdi’s assassination was one of the murders of opposition officials during the presidency of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Three years earlier, in April 1990, Dr. Kazem Rajavi, the representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, was assassinated in Geneva. He too was also the first representative of Iran in the United Nations in Geneva after the fall of the Shah, but he joined the Resistance in protest at the crimes of this regime. The diplomats and the clerical regime’s embassy in Geneva played a large part in organizing and implementing this assassination.

Based on formal reports of the Italian Judicial Police in 2003, Hamid Abutalebi was banned from entering the Schengen Area as a recognized as a crime suspect.

Abutalebi, who from the outset worked with the revolutionary guards’ intelligence and was involved in the hostage-taking of U.S. diplomats in Iran in 1979, joined the Foreign Ministry in 1981 and was transferred to the intelligence section of the regime’s embassy in Paris. Two years later he returned to Tehran and a while after that was transferred to regime’s embassy in Senegal. The Senegal government declared him an undesirable element and he was forced to leave that country.

As regime’s Ambassador to Italy, he more than ever organized the embassy’s actions against Iranian dissidents and employed the intelligence services against the opposition on an extensive scale.

He who cannot deny his role during the hostage-taking is attempting to minimize it by says that he had played the role of an interpreter for the Students Followers of the Imam’s Line! (Khabar Online – 9 March 2014) Iran Newspaper on 18 November 2013 quoted one of the Students Followers of the Imam’s Line named as Mohammad-hashem Esfehani as saying: “With the occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, another wave of the Islamic revolution, or as an Imam put it, a ‘second revolution’, happened. They began inviting the ‘world liberating movements’ and Mr. Abdei and Mr. Hamid Abutalebi went to Algeria in 1979 on behalf of the Muslim Students Followers of the Imam’s Line and invited seventeen world liberating movements to Tehran. Meaning that on one hand we (the Muslim Students Followers of the Imam’s Line) held the flag of ‘unity among the world’s wretched’ and in the other hand we held the 52 American hostages.” The appointment of a criminal terrorist by Rouhani as the regime’s Ambassador to the United Nations once again brings this reality to the eyes of the world that claims of moderation by the religious fascism ruling Iran is nothing but an absurd deception of the international community.

This regime and its representatives and diplomats who are generally involved in torture, execution, espionage and terrorism against the opposition should be banished and expelled from the international community.